Magic, almost in its entirety, is connected to sexuality. This book examines the sacred sexuality that arose in the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries including P. B. Randolph’s white sexual magic, the black sexual magic of Aleister Crowley, the practices of Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola, Maria de Naglowska, and Margot Anand, and the sexual rituals of Wicca.

Magic, almost in its entirety, is connected to sexuality. It is through the natural magic of love that sex magic operates, harnessing the forces that join lovers together. In this extensive study of sex magic in the Eastern and Western Mystery traditions, Sarane Alexandrian explains how there is a sex magic connected with every religion, spiritual belief system, and initiatory society.

Exploring sexual practices in folk magic, high magic, alchemy, and religion, the author begins with a complete overview of love magic in the Middle Ages, including accounts of the use of potions, powders, spells, and enchantments, and he reveals how these techniques related to the religious practices of the time. He introduces the Taoist sexual alchemy practices of Mantak Chia, the secret tantric practices of the Tibetan bons, sexual shiatsu, and a Vietnamese practice called “mouth moxa.”

Examining the sacred sexuality that arose in Western initiatory orders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Alexandrian details the development of P. B. Randolph’s white sexual magic and the black sexual magic of Aleister Crowley, as well as explaining the practices of Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola and the Ur Group, and Maria de Naglowska. He reveals the scientific principles underlying sex magic and how successful results are guaranteed by the influences of the heavenly bodies and the radiant powers of color, number, scents, and physical movements, which intensify the activity of the human bioelectric field. Alexandrian also details the tantra practices of Margot Anand, the sexual rituals of Wicca, and magical “sex aids,” including talismans and jewels.

Providing complete practical information, the author explains how, through sex magic, a couple can extract from each other what they are missing by way of virility and femininity, multiplying their energies tenfold and merging the carnal and spiritual worlds to experience transcendent adventures in the deepest depths of reality.

Excerpt

Book Excerpt

Chapter 1The Love Spell Traditions

Love Potions

Potions were beverages intended to transform individuals, primarily by making them fall in love with the persons who gave it to them. This is why the Greek word pharmakeia, poisoning (from which the word pharmacy is derived) was the equivalent of the English witchcraft. The witches of Thessaly, the first to enjoy a dreadful reputation, were called pharmakides. They used plants from the nightshade family with hallucinatory effects, which they harvested during a religious ceremony in which they left their hair unbound (which attracted elementary spirits). Medea, the most famous magician, stripped naked to cull verbena, a plant sacred to Aphrodite. Belladonna was called “witches herb” because of its frequent use for potions. Its roots and leaves caused dizzy spells or frenetic dancing. Henbane caused temporary madness, and jimson weed caused a stupor that lasted twenty-four hours, accompanied by disturbing visions. The berries of meadow saffron triggered a sense of unreasoning terror, and mandrake root, added as a powder to drinks, caused total imbecility. The victims of these potions suffered attacks of mental confusion that left them defenseless against any amorous undertakings.

As magic is based on the law of sympathies and correspondences between beings and things, ingredients that induced lust through analogy were also placed in these brews. Cornelius Agrippa, who in 1533 collected a number of love potions for his De occulta philosophia, said they were made from the heart and genitals of animals possessing great amorous ardor, such as doves, swallows, and similar small birds, and the rabbit and the wolf. Often used was the flesh of a lizard from the iguana family: the stellion. Sometimes a vial containing the potion would be placed beneath the straw mattress of a brothel for several days so its potency would be increased by the fornications performed above it. Agrippa notes:

Those who wish to make love spells ordinarily hide or lock away the instruments of their art, their rings, their images, and their mirrors in some evil place, which gives them their virtue by a venerian faculty.

Jerome Cardan, speaking in 1550 of the love potions of that era made from cats’ brain, menstrual blood, and hippomane, a genital secretion from a rutting mare, noted, “These things disturb the mind more than compel the love of the person to whom they are given.” In fact, these potions were often responsible for fatal frenzies, and their makers were punished as criminals. The epicurean poet Lucretius, author of De natura rerum [The Nature of Things], after drinking a love potion given him by his mistress Lucilia, committed suicide after the intense attack of madness it induced. Charles VI died from the love potion given him by his wife the Duchess of Cleves. These beverages were thus replaced by powders to cast on the person who was the target of the seduction, which was much less harmful; these powders contained the same ingredients dried and pulverized.

Pierre Le Loyer mentions an affair, when he was a young lawyer in 1580, that was judged by the Parliamentary Court of Paris against a young man who, it was claimed, used powders placed in a scroll of virgin parchment to attract the love of a young girl so he could take his pleasure of her. He had caught sight of her in the street and when she passed by him, he had slipped this scroll inside her low-cut dress, between her breasts, so forcefully, that she fell ill from the irritation. The lawyer for the accused said this was excusable, as he had not made the victim take anything in her mouth that would poison her. The young woman’s lawyer protested:

Poison or venom is not only a poisonous potion or herb or drug that is naturally fatal, and when taken by the mouth kills the person. Poison is also a love potion, an herb, a parchment, a letter, or a magic enchantment that works something against nature.

In his manual, the inquisitor Martin Delrio revealed:

Witches slay with certain fine powders that they mix into meat or drink, by rubbing over the naked body, or by spreading them on clothes. Of these powders, those that are meant to kill are black, the others, which are only for causing illness, are ash-colored or red. Those, which to the contrary, are for healing are most often white.

Powders were also made to compel a young girl to dance stark naked. The Petit Albert prescribed harvesting marjoram, thyme, myrtle leaves, walnut leaves, and fennel root on Saint John’s Eve in June, then drying and powdering the plants before straining them through a sieve.

You must blow this powder into the air of the place where the girl is, or have her take some as tobacco, and the effect will soon follow.

Potions in powdered form were commonly used everywhere. In The Magic Island (in which voodoo worship is described), William Seabrook recounts how Maman Célie came to the aid of her grandson who had been rejected by the girl he loved. With a dried, powdered hummingbird, a few drops of the young man’s blood, flower pollen, and other substances, she made a mixture she put inside a pouch made from the skin of goat testicles. This became a powder that the young man cast in the face of his recalcitrant girlfriend during a dance. She immediately fell in love with him. There is nothing surprising about this: a superstitious individual who finds herself the target of a magic spell believes that all resistance is futile; and her seducer, emboldened by this fact, lost all shyness and won her heart.

Table of Contents

Table of content

Contents

Preface

1 The Love Spell Traditions

2 The White Magic of Love

3 The High Science of Sacred Sexuality

4 The Great Work of the Flesh

5 How to Make Love with an Invisible Creature

6 The Art of Riding the Tiger

7 Magical Sex Aids

Coda

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Author Bio

Sarane Alexandrian was a member of the surrealist group in Paris in the years directly after World War II. He is the author of more than 60 books, including novels, a memoir, and studies of occultism, eroticism, and art. He died in Paris in 2009.

Reviews

Reviews

Book Praise

Book Praise

“A potent history of the mystical magical rituals that elevate sexuality into a transcendent experience heightening consciousness and alchemical evolution.” Brigitte Mars, author of The Sexual Herbal: Prescriptions for Enhancing Love and Passion

“The Great Work of the Flesh digs through the world’s cultures and long histories to reveal the erotic lore called ‘sex magic’ that constitutes serious possibilities for us all--far beyond the biologized eroticism of mere sex-drive scientific sexology. In taking these charms, incantations, rituals, herbs, potions, and meditations seriously, we can get glimpses that there are ever more erotic galaxies still out there to be fathomed and shared.” Stuart Sovatsky, PhD, author of Advanced Spiritual Intimacy and Words from the Soul

“Alexandrian’s study, which is well supported by striking examples, deserves our full attention, for it reveals an aspect of our humanity that is far too often concealed.” Claude Lecouteux, professor emeritus, Paris-Sorbonne, and author of The High Magic of Talismans and Amulets

“In moving away from the typical black magician perspective of eroticism and the occult, Sarane Alexandrian brings much needed clarity to the depths of sex magic. The Great Work of the Flesh has synthesized the history and methods of this ancient art like no other before it, where we enter a realm of orgasmic wonder. Translator Jon Graham has brilliantly brought Sarane Alexandrian’s work to life for the English world.” Jason Gregory, author of The Science and Practice of Humility

“This outstanding work by Sarane Alexandrian, one of the authors best qualified to write it, has now been skillfully and knowledgeably translated into English by Jon Graham, one of those most qualified to translate this work. Don’t miss it.” Donald Traxler, translator of The Inner Traditions Maria de Naglowska series

Back Cover

Back Cover Copy

Occult/Sexuality

“A potent history of the mystical magical rituals that elevate sexuality into a transcendent experience heightening consciousness and alchemical evolution.” --Brigitte Mars, author of The Sexual Herbal: Prescriptions for Enhancing Love and Passion

Magic, almost in its entirety, is connected to sexuality. It is through the natural magic of love that sex magic operates, harnessing the forces that join lovers together. In this extensive study of sex magic in the Eastern and Western Mystery traditions, Sarane Alexandrian explains how there is a sex magic connected with every religion, spiritual belief system, and initiatory society.

Exploring sexual practices in folk magic, high magic, alchemy, and religion, the author begins with a complete overview of love magic in the Middle Ages, including accounts of the use of potions, powders, spells, and enchantments, and he reveals how these techniques related to the religious practices of the time. He introduces the Taoist sexual alchemy practices of Mantak Chia, the secret tantric practices of the Tibetan bons, sexual shiatsu, and a Vietnamese practice called “mouth moxa.”

Examining the sacred sexuality that arose in Western initiatory orders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Alexandrian details the development of P. B. Randolph’s white sexual magic and the black sexual magic of Aleister Crowley, as well as explaining the practices of Austin Osman Spare, Julius Evola and the Ur Group, and Maria de Naglowska. He reveals the scientific principles underlying sex magic and how successful results are guaranteed by the influences of the heavenly bodies and the radiant powers of color, number, scents, and physical movements, which intensify the activity of the human bioelectric field. Alexandrian also details the tantra practices of Margot Anand, the sexual rituals of Wicca, and magical “sex aids,” including talismans and jewels.

Providing complete practical information, the author explains how, through sex magic, a couple can extract from each other what they are missing by way of virility and femininity, multiplying their energies tenfold and merging the carnal and spiritual worlds to experience transcendent adventures in the deepest depths of reality.

SARANE ALEXANDRIAN (1927-2009) was a member of the surrealist group in Paris in the years directly after World War II. He is the author of more than 60 books, including novels, a memoir, and studies of occultism, eroticism, and art.

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Founded in 1975, Inner Traditions • Bear & Company is one of the largest and oldest publishing houses in the world devoted exclusively to the subjects of spirituality, the occult, ancient mysteries, new science, holistic health, and natural medicine. Happily nestled in the Green Mountains of Vermont for more than 30 years, the company now has over 1,500 titles in print.